One last comeback as Greece rediscovers Callas

She was the prima of all donnas, a diva for all lovers of the finest music. But as much as she was lionised abroad, the little girl christened Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulou, before reaching stardom as Maria Callas, was never quite as well received at home.

Among her own, at least, the singer is better known for her family's fraternisation with the enemy during the Italian occupation of Athens, her ill-fated affair with that other Olympian Greek, Aristotle Onassis, and her tempestuous relationship with her mother, than for any of her supreme operatic skills.

Look hard enough and you will find a tiny bust of the chanteuse tucked away in an alley behind the Athens Hilton, but other than that there is not even a street named after her in the Greek capital. Indeed, for years, it has only been a hardy few - usually those who want to tread the boards at the under-funded National Opera House - who have ever bothered to light a candle in her name.

Until now, that is. Three decades after her premature death in Paris, the Greeks appear to be making a concerted effort to reclaim the world-renowned soprano with the instantly recognisable voice.

Suddenly in this, the Official Year of Maria Callas, MPs are tripping over themselves to attend recitals, concerts and shows dedicated to La Divina.

Even the Athens parliament, which has failed, scandalously, to recognise the great dramatic singer's contribution to Greece, has weighed in on the act with an exhibition in her memory. And, with the timing of a maestro's baton, those who once met her are surfacing to recall the icon who avoided the land of the gods during her latter years - when her voice had cracked and her joy had gone - for fear of the schadenfreude it might elicit.

'It has taken us 30 years to find her,' says Yiannis Papathanasiou, a former deputy mayor and dedicated opera lover who in 2002 went against the tide to establish a small Maria Callas Museum beneath the Acropolis. 'We've had a very strange relationship with Maria, even if she is to the classical world what Madonna is today. Yes, you could rightly say that we are reclaiming her, although I'd like to add only to give back to the world again.'

While the new focus is on the diva's glamour, wealth and charisma, and almost none of the tragedy and scandal that also marked her life (until now Greeks would mention Callas in the same breath as Onassis, who left her for Jackie Kennedy months after she gave birth to his stillborn son), the love attack may be too late.

The Italians, who also see Callas as one of their own, given her marriage to industrialist Giovanni Meneghini and her long sojourn at La Scala, have named several streets after her. Recently they issued a La Divina stamp and produced a book of her favourite recipes.

To make matters worse, the Italians also appear to have more of her possessions. While visitors to the Maria Callas Museum have to make do with a wig, gloves and photographs of the singer playing with her favourite dog, more than 500 of her personal effects went on display at Athens's Italian Cultural Institute on Thursday night.

'When they came up for auction in Paris seven years ago, the municipality never had the money to buy them,' Papathanasiou said. 'One Lebanese devotee felt so sorry for us during the sale, he bought the dress she wore in Norma and donated it to us there and then.'

But fans should know this: in a vault somewhere in this city, there are hundreds of Callas's knickers and stockings. 'The Athenian conservatory bought them and hid them for fear of exposing Callas to ridicule,' says Papathanasiou. 'People could be wearing them for all I know.'

Game on again to win the marbles back?

Also troubling Greeks is the question over what the departure of Tony Blair would mean for the long-running battle to reclaim the Elgin - oops, Parthenon - marbles from the British Museum.

In the corridors of the Greek Culture Ministry, officials are whispering that a new broom in Downing Street may help their cause. The British PM's departure comes only months away from the opening of the long-awaited and, may I add, resplendent, New Acropolis Museum at the foot of the holy hill. The £93m, three-storey behemoth will put 'irresistible' pressure on Gordon Brown to give back the marbles, campaigners say. 'I am sure that the construction of the museum will provide a new, very powerful argument,' said the Greek Prime Minister, Kostas Karamanlis.